The tragedies of 14 March, 2019 & 2020

Back in 2013, 14 March was my Day of Hope, where I regained hope on my results for the SPM examination. From 2014 to 2018, 14 March was uneventful.

However, in both 2019 and 2020, 14 March was a really terrible day for me.

14 March 2019 was during my 5th year of MBBS. A tragedy had happened about 2 weeks ago which triggered a crisis. Since then, the situation had been improving and I was quite hopeful that everything would return to normal soon. However on that day, I realised that I just screwed up once again, triggering the 2nd wave of the crisis. I wasn't sure what I actually did wrong, and my group mates who knew what happened refused to tell me about it. Worse still, my group mates made a one-sided judgement about me and didn't give me the opportunity to explain. The 2nd wave of the crisis made the remainder of 5th year so dull and meaningless and it ruined most of my memories in that year. The crisis got resolved eventually, but that didn't have any long-term significance.

14 March 2020 was during my 6th year of MBBS. The Covid-19 pandemic had begun some time ago. On the week before that, I and my group mates were posted to Kluang. We had a great time there and I was really looking forward to our second week in Kluang. However on that day, NUMed announced the cancellation of all clinical placements due to the rapidly worsening Covid-19 situation. I could no longer go to Kluang in the following week because of that, which made me feel really sad. Worse still, later on that day I and my group mates were told that we got exposed to a Covid-19 patient when we were in Kluang, which required us to undergo home quarantine for 2 weeks. Soon afterwards, NUMed cancelled all campus teaching due to the implementation of the MCO. As a result, I couldn't meet my friends for several months. Campus teaching eventually resumed in early July 2020, but only for 2 weeks.

Both years, 14 March marked the start of a huge change to my experience for the remainder of the academic year. However, there is a very important difference between the two. The 14 March 2019 incident made me despise my 5th year group mates, while the 14 March 2020 incident made me cherish my 6th year group mates so much more.

I pray that 14 March 2021 will be a good day.